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The tumultuous 1960s was a watershed decade for American science fiction. As the nation raced to the moon, acknowledged masters from the genre's "golden age" reached the height of their powers. As it confronted calls for civil rights and countercultural revolution, a "new wave" of brilliant young voices emerged, upending the genre's "pulp" conventions with newfound literary sophistication; female, queer, and nonwhite authors broke into the ranks of SF writers, introducing provocative new protagonists and themes. Here, in a deluxe, two-volume collector's set, editor Gary K. Wolfe gathers eight wildly inventive novels, the decade's best: Daniel Keyes' beloved Flowers for Algernon and Poul Anderson's madcap The High Crusade; Clifford D. Simak's Hugo Award-winning Way Station; Roger Zelazny's post-apocalyptic ...And Call Me Conrad (previously published as This Immortal); Joanna Russ' Picnic on Paradise, a pioneering work of feminist SF, and Samuel R. Delany's proto-cyberpunk space opera Nova; R.A. Lafferty's quirky, neglected, utterly original Past Master; and Jack Vance's haunting Emphyrio.

The first volume contains:

• Poul Anderson / The High Crusade
• Clifford D. Simak / Way Station
• Daniel Keyes / Flowers for Algernon
• Roger Zelazny / ... And Call Me Conrad (This Immortal)

The second volume contains:

• R. A. Lafferty / Past Master
• Joanna Russ / Picnic on Paradise
• Samuel R. Delany / Nova
• Jack Vance / Emphyrio

The tumultuous 1960s was a watershed decade for American science fiction. While acknowledged masters from the genre's golden age reached the height of their powers, a new wave of brilliant young voices emerged, upending the genre's pulp conventions with newfound literary sophistication. SF writers experimented and crossed boundaries, questioning their predecessors' often utopian faith in technological progress and boldly imagining new possibilities of human existence in novels that continue to astonish today.

Here, in the first volume of a two-volume collector's set, editor Gary K. Wolfe gathers four trailblazing novels that reveal the full range of the decade's creative intensities. In The High Crusade (1960), Poul Anderson celebrates the space operas of the pulp era, but with a madcap twist: when technologically advanced aliens touch down among the seeming primitives of medieval England, they find they have met their match. Clifford D. Simak's Hugo Award-winning Way Station (1963) follows the progress of an unassuming Civil War veteran whose rural Wisconsin homestead has, unbeknownst to his neighbors, become an unlikely nexus of intergalactic battle.

Daniel Keyes's much-loved best seller Flowers for Algernon (1966) imagines a near-future in which intelligence can be enhanced artificially--but Keyes downplays the speculative and technical possibilities of his premise in favor of intimate character study, taking the SF novel in daring new directions. In the postapocalyptic thriller This Immortal (1966)--published here under the author's preferred title ...And Call Me Conrad--Roger Zelazny weaves a skein of ancient myth and legend into his tale of mutant humans and blue aliens with the allusive daring and stylistic virtuosity that exemplify the New Wave at its best.

This first volume contains:

• Poul Anderson / The High Crusade
• Clifford D. Simak / Way Station
• Daniel Keyes / Flowers for Algernon
• Roger Zelazny / ... And Call Me Conrad (This Immortal)

The tumultuous 1960s was a watershed decade for American science fiction. While acknowledged masters from the genre's golden age reached the height of their powers, a new wave of brilliant young voices emerged, upending the genre's pulp conventions with newfound literary sophistication. Amid calls for civil rights and countercultural revolution, female, nonwhite, and other outsider authors broke into the ranks of SF writers, introducing provocative new protagonists and themes.

Here, in the second volume of a two-volume collector's set, editor Gary K. Wolfe presents four of the best novels from the final years of the decade. In R. A. Lafferty's utterly idiosyncratic and uncategorizable Past Master (1968), Renaissance philosopher Thomas More is summoned to Golden Astrobe in the year 2535: Can he save the planet's troubled utopia from its soulless technological perfection and ensure the survival of the faith? Joanna Russ introduces one of SF's first and most engaging female adventurers in her taut and edgy debut novel Picnic on Paradise (1968): the tough, sardonic, unforgettable Alyx, an ancient Phoenician mercenary teleported into the future to serve as guide and bodyguard for a band of stranded space tourists.

The first African American writer to make a name for himself in the genre, Samuel R. Delany was hailed as "the best science-fiction writer in the world" on the basis of Nova (1968), a white-hot, fast-paced, protocyberpunk interstellar adventure featuring a misfit crew on a high-stakes quest. Stumbling on a mysterious ancient text among his father's belongings, the son of a master woodcarver uncovers the key to revolutionary change in Jack Vance's Emphyrio (1969), a marvel of craftsmanship and visionary world-building set on remote, feudal, theocratic Halma.

This second volume contains:

• R. A. Lafferty / Past Master
• Joanna Russ / Picnic on Paradise
• Samuel R. Delany / Nova
• Jack Vance / Emphyrio